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The Snap Results

At the point where I had 1500 responses to my How Far We've Come survey (which happened in a few hours) I decided to take a peak at the results.

First, some background stats. 44% of respondents owned one DSLR, while 51% owned two or more (95% owned at least one DSLR). 24% of the respondents owned at least one mirrorless camera. This biases the results a bit, as it implies that many of the people taking the survey don't have experience with mirrorless. Nevertheless, I was going after people's impressions, not what they've discovered in shooting.The survey takers are a group that shoots a lot of images, though. Over 50% said they've taken more than a 1000 images in a single month some time in the last couple of years. Indeed, 14% of those said they had a month where they took more 10,000 images. I'm not sure I have had such a month in the last couple of years.

So here are the breakdowns of the head-to-head comparisons:

2002: 89% chose V1 (mirrorless), 11% chose D100 (DSLR)

2003: 92% chose E-P3 (mirrorless), 8% chose E-1 (DSLR)

2004: 96% chose NEX-7 (mirrorless), 4% chose Maxxum 7D (DSLR)

2007: 64% chose V1 (mirrorless), 36% chose D80 (DSLR)

2009: 83% chose D90 (DSLR), 17% chose V1 (mirrorless)

My comments in the article seem to be validated by the results (even though this wasn't a scientifically accurate poll, especially since I gave my answer before surveying): most of us would have indeed chosen a V1 over a D100 if we had been offered one in 2002. And it seems like most of you think that the high-consumer V1 mirrorless is about equivalent to the high-consumer DSLR of about 2008 (four years ago).

I'll leave you to make of that what you wish. My original article was intended to provoke people to really think about where we are versus where we've been.